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This interview was conducted by Antiwar Radio producer Angela Keaton.

Robert Dreyfuss, author of The Dreyfuss Report blog for The Nation, discusses Time Magazine’s graphic warning of “what happens if we leave Afghanistan,” right-wing commentators who suddenly give a damn about the rights of women, a reminder that the (relative) paragon of Middle East gender equality was prewar Iraq, Obama’s unwillingness to choose either escalation or withdrawal and why dramatic societal changes will take generations to unfold in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan didn't matter c.1990. The Taliban were not angry with America and just wanted to take over Afghanistan. Where the Americans went wrong was in not apparently noticing the widespread anger in the Muslim world when 'infidel' American troops occupied the 'holy land' of the Arabian Peninsula in large numbers and refused to go home again after the Gulf War was over. The CIA had only to read the Islamic press and listen to the radio to know that. Even then you have to explain how a bunch of amateurs trained mostly in the US were able to accomplish 75% of their mission when they should have been caught long before they boarded a plane.

of course just some of the hypocrisy of this subject includes Uncle Sam's demand to see our daughters, wives, etc, naked at airports and to destroy any lingering male dignity when these allow TSA thugs to grope and finger-fuck them in that "search" for terrorists.

Total cynicism motivates Time Magazine's crude exploitation of an Afghan woman – mutilated for whatever reason. When Time Magazine features a young woman mutilated for trying to escape a brothel run by Albanian gangsters, or when Time Magazine features a baby girl in Falluja whose grotesque congenital facial deformities resulted from heavy depleted uranium contamination thanks to US bombardment and whose parents despair of every having a healthy child, then we might take Time's 'championing' of Afghan women with less disdain. Given how sick our empire builders have become – how do we know that Afghans and not Americans mutilated this woman to feed anti-muslim hysteria.

For every Afghan woman mutilated by the Taliban, you can be sure a thousand have been mutilated by US shrapnel bombs. We may safely suspect that our troops do as much raping as they can, too, just like in Viet Nam days.

I agree that nation-building in Afghanistan is a Sisyphean task and that all foreign occupation should be ended. I do take exception, however, with the host's observation that conservative or traditional opposition to the so called femnist agenda in the United States can be likened to the brutality of the Taliban. Feminism in the West has largely been a statist, quasi Marxist political movement. And opposition to legalized abortion is not akin to advocating stoning or female circumcision. After all, more than half babies aborted in this country are females.

Afghanistan was never an athiest communists country, although some in government wanted to make it one. The effort to convert Afghanistan into a Communist country caused a huge uprising exploited and supported by US/Pakistan. The Communists were not able to hold on to the power even with the full military support of the Soviets. The fight was between various Mujahedeen factions and the Soviet-backed government.

Where did Angela "liken conservatives in the US to the Taliban." I didn't hear anything like that. She pointed out, correctly, that American conservatives haven't given support to women's issues here, but are parading the world as defenders of Muslim women (even while killing them with the American military.)

American "conservatives" aren't really very conservative, anyway. When John Major (last British Conservative PM) left public life, he gave a speech in which he talked about his love of English traditions, like warm beer and village cricket. US "conservatism" isn't about cold beer and baseball! It's about privileges without duties for plutocrats and religious fanatics. (That's why they talk about "values" instead of "virtues": their values are actually traditional vices.) Basically, a lot of them want Jim Crow back, maybe even some kind of slavery or serfdom. By personality, I'm fond of traditions. I am cautious and careful, and don't assume that new is better. But because I object to being Richie Richkid's serf, I guess I'm an evil liberal.

That inference was hardly unjustified. Angela said those on the right who are now trying to justify the US occupation as necessary to protecting women are not generally friendly to "women's issues." What exactly are women's issues? Feminists hardly speak for most women in this country.